{"id":649907,"date":"2026-05-18T07:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T07:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/649907\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T07:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T07:25:10","slug":"how-to-keep-safe-as-more-black-bears-spotted-in-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/649907\/","title":{"rendered":"How to keep safe as more black bears spotted in Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ll start this story with one I’ve told before: the time I “killed” a black bear<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Back in 2014, while driving on I-84 in New York, a creature scurried onto the highway at full speed as I approached. I couldn’t do anything but strike the animal head-on and hope traffic around me adjusted. It did, but the animal bounced off my car and nicked another before resting dead on the side of the road.<\/p>\n

I quickly pulled over and called police, and maybe 15 minutes later a state trooper took me back to the scene, revealing a black cub<\/a> who likely had wandered from its parent.<\/p>\n

It’s rare to be responsible for the death of a black bear, but it happens more commonly up north where the black bear population is larger. According to the documentary series Nature<\/a>, black bears exist in around 40 U.S. states, and World Population Review estimates<\/a> higher populations in Alaska, California, Maine, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. There are approximately 7,000 black bears in New York and 20,000 in Pennsylvania, which was close to me when I unfortunately collided with my victim.<\/p>\n

But there aren’t as many in Texas. In fact, World Population Review estimated 75 total in the Lone Star State; if that’s true, I’ve seen about 3 percent of them. That’s because a few years back I stopped mid-trail at Big Bend National Park as a mother and her cub passed to head up the mountain.<\/p>\n

The same bear showed up once more, as a game camera captured him knocking over a deer feeder last week in Anderson County, per KLTV in Tyler<\/a>. This doesn’t mean the black bear population is about to explode in East Texas; for one, a bear needs a second bear to make a third, and officials have not spotted that second bear.<\/p>\n

The black bear speces is threatened in Texas, meaning it’s against the law to hunt, harass or kill them. Per the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department<\/a>, killing a black bear could result in penalties of up to $10,000, plus more fines, jail time and the loss of hunting privileges. If you do come across a black bear, you should do the following:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’ll start this story with one I’ve told before: the time I “killed” a black bear. Back in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[138621,138622,243122,79,201],"class_list":["post-649907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-chronnews","tag-chronstaff","tag-chrontexas","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}